Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman was an eminent Indian Scientist. He was the first scholar who studied wholly in India.
He was the first Indian Scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was also the first Asian as well as the first non-white to receive the Nobel Prize.
C. V. Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on November 7, 1888. His father was a college physics teacher. Right from the start, Raman was a brilliant student. So, when Raman passed his matriculation, his parents wanted to send him abroad for higher studies. But a British surgeon told them not to send him abroad as he was not healthy enough. Raman did his M.A. course at Presidency College in Madras (now called Chennai).
Raman was fond of the Science subject. When he was 19, he became a member of the Indian Association for Cultivation of Science. The headquarters of it was an old building on the busy Bowbazaar Street in Calcutta. Meanwhile Raman took up an administrative job in the Finance Ministry in Calcutta so as to respect the wishes of his parents.
In his youth, Raman was mainly interested in acoustics, the science of sound. He studied how stringed instruments like the sitar and the violin could produce harmonious music. He became a knight of the British Empire in 1929.
With equipment worth only Rs. 200 and limited facilities available in his laboratory, Raman was able to make a discovery known as the Raman Effect, which won him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1930. Earlier, in 1927, Professor A.H. Compton had won the Nobel Prize for the Compton Effect. Compton Effect says that the nature of X-rays changes when passes through the matter. Raman Effect says that the nature of light changes when passes through transparent medium. Raman’s advice to the young scientists was to look at the world around them and not to confine themselves to their laboratories. Raman passed away in 1970 on November 21.
